Of Serpents and Secrets
by Kyle Peverell
Summary: The story of how Tom Marvolo Riddle discovered that he was Slytherin's heir and how he discovered the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Follow Tom through his fifth year at Hogwarts.
1. Orphanage again

**This is my first ever fan fiction and I hope you guys like it. I want this story to be about Voldemort's fifth year at school but if this story is strongly accepted by you guys, I may write the stories of his sixth year, seventh year and even his rise to power. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any on the characters within the Harry Potter universe because if I did, I wouldn't have named Ron and Hermione's kid Hugo.**

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Tom Marvolo Riddle lied on his stomach, stretched across his bed, flipping through the dusty pages of an old second hand copy of _Hogwarts: A History_. He had made it his personal duty to learn all he could about the Wizarding School; after all, Hogwarts had always felt like home to him, yet, Tom felt as if he still knew little about the castle.

The one story that he found most intriguing was the legend of a hidden chamber that Salazar Slytherin himself had built within the school, just prior to his permanent departure. It was said that the hidden chamber was home to a monster only Slytherin's heir could control. The monster, whatever it may be, existed for the sole purpose of purging the school of the unworthy. The muggle born. This so called hidden chamber was named the Chamber of Secrets. Naturally, many headmasters and headmistresses through out the ages had had the school searched numerous times; however, each evaluation returned the same results, which were that no such chamber existed. Tom didn't believe such rubbish. Tom wanted to find the entrance to the chamber and open it. He so desperately wished that he was Slytherin's heir.

But time was becoming an issue. Tom had searched the school for the Chamber of Secrets since he was in his second year and he still had no leads to the chambers location nor was he able to trace his lineage back to Slytherin. Truth was that he wasn't able to find his family tree at all, not even in the grand library at Hogwarts. Tom was now entering his fifth year at the school. His time to search the castle for the Chamber of Secrets was now going to be, at the very least, cut in half due to his O.W.L.'s. He had a feeling that it would have to be now or never, otherwise, his sixth year would be his last free year to find it as his seventh and final year would be taken over by his N.E.W.T.'s.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Tom's heart skipped a beat as his mind fell back into reality. He gazed over at the window and saw a tawny owl standing on his windowsill. The owl tapped on the window again and Tom closed his book and got off his bed and lazily walked over to the window and opened it to let the bird in. The owl stumbled inside and gave a small hoot as if saying "Thanks" and stretched out it's leg which contained a letter that Tom recognized being from Hogwarts. Tom rather quickly removed the letter from the bird. As the bird flew out the window, Tom tore into his letter which seemed to be much larger than last years. It was at that moment that something heavy and silver fell out of the envelope and land with a clunk on the hard wood floor beneath his feet. Tom didn't bother to look at it just yet. Whatever it was, he was certain that the letter would explain it.

_Dear Mr. Riddle,_

_Myself and the entire staff at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry wish to congratulate you on becoming Slytherin house prefect. You were by far the best choice we could make. You will now have access to the prefects' bathroom. The password is "Clear Water". The exact location of this bathroom is on the fifth floor, fourth door past the statue of Boris the Bewildered. On September first, we must ask you to board the Hogwarts Express and make your way immediately to the prefects' carriage at the front of the train. Your schedules will be passed out there and the list of the rules and punishments you can now give students will be made clear._

_On a lighter note, there are no extra required books for fifth year students to buy this year. As you are part of the Hogwarts Helpers Fund, we have still sent you money this year, incase you needed something such as new school robes. You may, however, spend the money in anyway you like._

_Sincerely,_

_Armando Dippet_

_Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

Tom gazed down at the floor and sure enough, there was a shiny prefect badge that was pinned to a small leather sack of gold, silver and bronze. He picked it up and removed the badge, examining the serpent that was etched upon it. Usually, every Hogwarts letter he had ever received was exactly identical to the letters from other students, but this one was different. It appeared that the headmaster took the time to write the letter to Tom personally. There was a knock on the door and Tom hurried over to his bed and tossed the gold under his pillow. He was still holding on to his prefect badge and his school letter in his hands.

"Come in."

The door opened and a boy who was about the same age as Tom entered the room and closed the door behind him. The boy wore a dirty and faded gray tunic and had his brown hair combed back. It was clear to Tom that the boy had just finished cleaning an extremely dirty area of the orphanage.

"What do you want, Stubbs?" Tom asked, coldly. He made it quite clear that Billy Stubbs wasn't welcome to be within Tom's presence.

"I wanted to know if you've seen my rabbit or to find out if you've killed this one too."

Tom chuckled to himself finding this quite amusing and at the same time, annoying. "Are you still accusing me of killing your stupid rabbit?" he asked. Tom shook his head and smirked, "I haven't seen your rabbit, Stubbs, but if I were you, I would check in the rafters. That is, after all, where your last rabbit ended up, isn't it?"

Tom chuckled again as Billy's face turned red with anger.

"I know you killed my rabbit, Tom, I know it!" Billy said, half shouting.

Tom just stood there, glaring at Billy Stubbs. It was only after a couple of seconds that a grin began to creep across Tom's face. "Tell me, Stubbs, do you have any proof that I killed your rabbit? Think about it! We were ten years old. There is no possible way I could have snuck into your room, randomly found some rope to tie a noose or even reach the rafters to hang your rabbit from them."

Tom took a few steps forward and found himself face to face with Billy Stubbs, towering over the boy.

"You know, Billy, not even my school thinks that I'm as terrible as you proclaim me to be because if they did, I doubt they would have sent me a letter announcing that I am now a school prefect!"

Tom raised the badge in front of Billy's eyes and Billy looked both speechless and ready to explode.

"Now, is there anything else you want to discuss with me because as much as I'd love to sit here and let you accuse me of killing your rabbit all day, I've got things to do?"

Billy stared Tom down for a few seconds before finding the ability to speak again.

"Yes, Tom, there is something else. Mrs. Cole wants to see you in her office," Billy said as he turned on his heels and rushed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Tom took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Muggle filth." Tom had a hard time trying to keep his cool around the muggles at the orphanage. Tom wanted nothing more than to rid the world of the whole lot of them but he remembered his first meeting with Professor Dumbledore. Dumbledore had struck some fear into him when he was a little child, he admitted it, but even though that fear was dead to Tom now, he knew better than to harm these muggles through magic. He wasn't powerful enough to take Dumbledore on and Tom knew that if he tried anything like that at the orphanage, Dumbledore and the Ministry of magic would stand in his way. Tom vowed that one day, muggles and even fellow witches and wizards everywhere would one day fear him, but that time was not now.

He grabbed the gold from under his pillow and made his way to his school trunk at the end of his bed where he placed the gold, the letter and the prefect badge inside it. He exited his room and made his way down the cold stone steps, his foot steps echoing slightly in the distance. He then took a right and swiftly moved down the corridor until he reached the door to Mrs. Cole's office. He knocked on the door.

"Come in."

Tom gripped the door handle and turned it slightly nervously though he didn't show any sign of it, and let himself in.

"Billy Stubbs said you wanted to see me, ma'am?" Tom had executed the question so gracefully that his well acted state of confusion sounded believable.

"Ah, Tom, yes, I did want to have a word…" Before Mrs. Cole could even say another word, Tom spoke again.

"Ma'am, if this is about Billy Stubbs missing rabbit, I didn't take it. I've only been back for a few weeks. I didn't even know he had another rabbit until I was reading a letter from my school announcing that I was made prefect and was confronted by him about it."

Mrs. Cole stared at him for a moment with a confused look on her face. "I was unaware that Billy had lost his rabbit… but its fine Tom, I don't believe you stole Billy's rabbit and I don't think you killed the first one. Even though you did have a motive to do it, you weren't tall enough to reach those rafters."

Tom swallowed and simply nodded his head once in agreement. Tom suddenly felt furious. He was out witted by Billy Stubbs, a mere muggle. Billy intented on Tom turning himself in and Tom almost fell for the trick.

"So you were made a prefect? This calls for a small celebration."

Tom just stood there, shocked as Mrs. Cole made her way to her liquor cabinet and grabbed two glasses, pouring something into them in which Tom could not see due to the angle he was in. Mrs. Cole never acted like this, well, at least not very often.

"Hope you like gin," she said as she turned around and made her way to Tom, handing him a glass then making her way around her desk to take her seat once more.

Tom inclined his head. "Yes, thank you."

"Well, Tom, the reason why I've called you here tonight is to discuss your living arrangements after you turn 17. You'll be at the school when you turn 17 and I'm not just going to toss your things out while you're gone because that would be unfair even beyond my abilities, so I was wondering what your plans were."

Tom cracked a small smile. "Well, I actually have given this some thought. I plan on asking the school if I could stay over the summers. I don't think that headmaster Dippet will say no. So I plan to take all of my belongings with me this year. If for some reason I come back to the orphanage during the summer, if you could give me the one final summer, I will take all my belongings back with me in my final year of school and you'll never see me again."

Mrs. Cole took a pull off the bottle of gin. "It seems like you have given this subject a fair amount of thought and your solution seems reasonable to me. Alright. Well, congratulations on making prefect and I hope your future works out for you Tom."

Tom sucked down his gin and sat the glass on her desk. "Thank you for everything Mrs. Cole. I appreciate everything you've done for me." Tom hated sucking up like that but he didn't have much of a choice in the situation. Without another word, Tom left the office and raced up the stone steps and entered his room. He sat on his bed and returned to _Hogwarts: A History. _Hours passed by until darkness began to sweep over him. He struck a match and lit his bedside oil lamp. It wasn't long before the flames cast dancing shadows upon the walls and brought drowziness upon his eyelids. Within minutues, the book had fallen to the floor and Tom lie on his bed, fast asleep.


	2. Blood Lines

**A/N- Thanks for the review. As I stated in the first chapter, this is my first fan fiction. I had anonymous reviews disabled unknowingly so if you want to review, you can now with out problems. Also, I would like to say that these begining chapters to some degree feel rushed, even to me, but I want to let you know that that will all change as soon as I can get Tom into Hogwarts. **

**Disclaimer- I don't own Harry Potter or any characters affiliated with the universe. If I did, I'm sure Harry would've tried to drown Snape in a cauldron full of Swelling Solution by the end of Sorcerers Stone.**

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Tom woke up the next morning to realize that he had fallen asleep in the middle of reading. He sat up, yawned, and rubbed his eyes. He picked up his book which had fallen off the bed and lay crumpled on the floor for several hours while Tom had been asleep. The last thing he could remember reading about was Rowena Ravenclaw and how she had came up with the idea for the ever changing staircase at Hogwarts. Tom got up and dressed into some clean clothes. He put on and older looking pair of shoes and walked out of his room, down the cold stone steps and down the corridor to Mrs. Cole's office.

It was the last place that Tom wanted to be at the moment but it was where he had to be. He knocked on the door, hoping that she still hadn't been sleeping.

"Yes. Come in."

Tom opened the door and walked into the same room he had just left the night before.

"Mrs. Cole, I've come to tell you that I plan to buy my school supplies today. Do I have permission to leave today?" he asked, charmingly.

Mrs. Cole nodded. "Yes, Tom, you have my permission to leave today but you know the rules. If you're still out after curfew, you'll be locked out all night. There are no exceptions to that rule."

Tom nodded briefly. "Yes, ma'am, I understand. Thank you." And with that, Tom walked out of the office, closing the door behind him.

He then walked down the hall, increasing speed as he did so, until he reached the front door. He then departed from the muggle orphanage and began walking down the streets of London. After walking several blocks on feet that were very sore from the terribly worn out shoes he was forced to wear, Tom had made his way down Charring Cross Road to the entrance of a shabby looking pub called _The Leaky Cauldron._

Tom entered the pub and without speaking another word, he made his way to the back exit so that he could enter Diagon Alley. As he opened the door and stepped out, he ran right into someone's back.

"Bloody hell! Watch where you're going next time, eh?"

The person in front of Tom spun around but the angry face staring at him didn't stay very angry for long. "Oh, Tom, it's you!"

Tom gave a small, lopsided grin. "Avery! Good to see you. Buying school supplies early?"

Avery nodded. "Refilling potions supplies and stuff like that. You're lucky that you get that stuff for free."

Tom nodded and slightly frowned at that. "Believe me, if I had the choice, I wouldn't take anything from those muggle lovers."

Avery then asked with curiosity in his voice, "What shopping do you have to do here?"

Tom shrugged. "Need a new set of robes mostly. I've out grown them."

Just then, there was a soft but audible 'Ahem' that sounded a bit like a cough. Avery shook his head slightly. "Tom, this is my father James, father, this is a friend of mine, Tom Riddle."

The man stuck a hand out and Tom shook it. "Pleasure to meet you, sir."

It was quite obvious to Tom that, in a way, Avery was ashamed of his father. It wasn't a well hidden secret. Avery soon changed the subject. "Dad and I are going down Knockturn Alley today. You want to come along?"

Tom seemed to think it over, not wanting to sound too desperate but after a moment, answered, "Yeah, that would be swell. I just have to be back at the orphanage by nine."

Avery nodded. He tapped the bricks above a trash can with his wand. Three up and two across. The brick wall in front of them began to unfold, revealing a large archway to a cobble stone street. Tom smiled as he saw the grand building of Gringott's bank. _'If only I could have a vault there_,' Tom thought, in a daydream like haze. He then turned to Avery. How 'bout I do my shopping and meet you at Knockturn in about… a couple hours?" he asked.

Avery smiled and nodded. "Alright, Riddle, see you then." Avery and his father made their way to the Apothecary as Tom made his way to _Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. _Tom had been saving for a while all the gold he really didn't need to spend. He was determined to show up to school at least one year with a new set of robes instead of the shabby second hand robes he had to settle for. He figured he'd give it a try this year, after all, he was made prefect. He walked into the shop and made his way to the counter. A young woman, who had been leaning her head on her hand as if bored, stood up straight and spoke. "Hello. What can I do for you today, sir?"

Tom wasn't sure he wanted to go through with this sort of embarrassment. "I was wondering, er, how much do robes cost here?"

The girl behind the counter smiled warmly to him rather than frown upon him like Tom imagined she would. "Well, the price varies on the sizes and lengths. I'm assuming your asking because you've either been shopping somewhere else, you're not from around here or you've gotten robes second hand. Either way, I can take some measurements for you and I can come up with a price range to see if that suits you. How's that sound?"

Tom nodded and smiled. "Sounds wonderful." Tom felt like an idiot. Of course she could see right through him. She probably saw this sort of thing all the time.

The woman smiled to him and walked out from behind the counter and made her way to a mirror. "Alright, come over here please." Tom quickly moved over to the mirror and stood in front of it. The woman took a magical tape measure from her pocket which began magically measuring Tom. "So, are you a Hogwarts student?"

Tom nodded. "Yes ma'am. Slytherin," he said and he saw her raise an eyebrow in the mirror. The woman tilted her head as she gazed down at her finger nail. "I had an uncle who was in Slytherin house. Haven't heard from him in ages though," she said, making small talk. She walked over to the counter and grabbed a quill and a piece of parchment, writing down measurements that the tape measure had made. She began to do some math on the parchment. "A robe would cost 15 sickles and 4 knuts."

Tom reached into his pocket and removed the leather pouch. He began counting his money and found that he had enough and then some. "I'll buy one."

After about an hour, Tom left the shop with a new Slytherin house robe that he had just been fitted for. Tom walked past a junk shop called _Dingo and Jay's _and he stopped dead in his tracks because he saw something in the window that he was actually interested in. It was a book entitled '_Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy'._ The book was obviously used because the leather bound cover was beat up and the silver lettering on the spine was wearing thin. Tom walked up to the shop and took a right to examine the book. He began flipping through the pages. The book was very old and filled with nothing but family trees of wizarding families. A shop keep walked up to him.

"Ah, that's a good book. Very old. Very valuable. At least it used to be valuable. The charm wore off. It used to automatically update itself but it doesn't anymore. That's why no one wants it. It still holds very valuable information though. I've had it for about five years now."

Tom had a little gleam in his eyes. Maybe he could find Slytherin's blood line or even his own with this book. Maybe. Just maybe. "How much for the book, sir?" he asked.

"2 galleons, 3 sickles and 1 knut."

Tom knew he didn't have that kind of money so he figured he'd bargain. "I could probably get a new copy of this book at Flourish and Blotts for the same price. I'll give you a galleon for it."

The shop keeper shook his head. "Sorry, but the price is set." Tom sat the book back on the shelf and began to walk out the door. "Fine," he said as he made his way out of the shop, "let's see if it sits on your shelf for another five years."

The shop keeper scratched his head and then seemed to decide that he didn't want the book for that long. "Wait!" he called out to Tom who stopped and turned around. "I suppose the charm has worn off… ok, fine, you've got yourself a deal." Tom walked over to the shelf, grabbed the book and laid his one and only galleon in the shop keepers hand then walked out. Tom placed the book in his robe bag and headed to Knockturn Alley and waited for Avery to show up.

It wasn't long before Avery and his father showed up. Avery smiled at Tom and said "You're here early." Tom nodded. "Shopping didn't take as long as I had assumed." They began walking down the dark, shady and much less busy alley way.

"So, what did you buy?" Avery asked as his father walked into _Borgin and Burkes_ after telling them to meet back there in 20 minutes.

"A new robe and a book about wizarding blood lines," Tom said, casually.

"Of all things you could've bought, why a new robe?" asked Avery, completely stumped.

"Because Professor Dippet sort of hinted that I should get one. Besides, I figured a new robe would look good with my new prefect badge."

Avery stopped in the alley way. "Bloody hell, Tom! You made prefect? And you're just now telling me this?"

"It's not like it was going to stay secret forever. You would've found out on the train," and then Tom's gaze fell on a window of a book store dedicated to selling books on the Dark Arts. There was a copy of '_Magic Moste Evil'_. "Damn," said Tom, angrily, "I've already spent my money."

Avery shrugged his shoulders. "It happens to the best of us." Avery was staring at the book as if he was making a mental note.

Tom turned away from it. "Let's go back to _Borgin and Burkes_. You're father will be out shortly.

As the day progressed, Tom eventually said goodbye to Avery and his father and made his way back to the orphanage. As he entered the old shabby building, he ran up the stone steps and into his room, closing the door behind him. He opened the book to the index and started searching the name Slytherin. When he found the name and the page, he flipped to it and realized that it started with a family called the Peverell's. When he found the name Slytherin, he followed the ancestry down, down, down until he fell upon the end of it. A family called Gaunt. '_Marvolo', _he thought, '_that's my middle name'._ His fingers then followed down the line to _Morfin_ and _Merope_. In this case, _Morfin_ never had children or even married but _Merope_ did. He followed the line that connected _Merope_'s name to… _Tom Riddle, Sr._? Tom's eyes opened wide. There was no children added to the list but it couldn't have been coincidence that this man had his name as well. He had to be Slytherin's heir. Had to be.

'_Named you Tom after your father, Marvolo after your grandfather and your last name was to be Riddle'. _Mrs. Cole's words echoed in his head. If Tom was the child of Merope and Tom Riddle, then not only would his name make sense but it would make this Marvolo Gaunt would be his grandfather. Tom knew right then that he was Slytherin's heir and there was no doubt about it. But he was curious who his father was since his mother had died giving birth to him. He swore then and there that he would find out who his father was.

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**Hope you all like it and I know this chapter took a while but I've been busy. I'm going to try to update every week or week and a half. Don't forget to review. Possitve or negative. I take it all. Thanks for reading.**


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